


make you banana pancakes (rain all day and i don't mind)

by a_classic_fool



Series: ready, aim, flour [3]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Great British Bake Off Fusion, Baked Goods, Depression, Gen, Sibling Love, Snickerdoodles as a plot point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 21:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12093465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_classic_fool/pseuds/a_classic_fool
Summary: John Laurens has a crisis over a failed batch of pretentious cupcakes. Martha Laurens really wishes he wouldn't destroy her kitchen.





	make you banana pancakes (rain all day and i don't mind)

“I hate,” says Martha, stepping in spilled egg yolk, “this goddamn show. I should’ve talked you out of it months ago.”

John, in the wake of the the cupcake debacle, has spent the week slowly taking over Martha Laurens’s kitchen, a process about which she is less than pleased. Since her brother’s return to the country, she’s found his continued presence in her apartment thoroughly comforting — as a med student, it’s not like she spends much time there anyway, and it makes her feel better to come home every night and find him alive, and safe, and whole — but she could have done without John’s increasingly single-minded fixation on proving drawers and daring flavor combinations. In the past three weeks alone, she’s smacked her head on an open cabinet door in the predawn darkness, bruised her tailbone from slipping on a discarded butter wrapper, and eaten dry cereal five mornings in a row due to John’s tendency to use all the milk and forget to replace it.

Although, to be totally fair, she does get to take his practice bakes to work, which has made her the hero of the obstetrics unit. She’s gotten all the best rounds assignments for weeks, even in spite of the goddamn cognac cupcakes.

“Sorry,” says John. “I gotta be more _normal_ , and nothing I’m trying is working. So I’m just gonna keep trying.”

“Jack,” says Martha. “You went to high school in Switzerland. I’m not sure you have a truly proletariat bone in your body when it comes to cooking. Remember that time in Philly when a tourist suggested Cheez Whiz was as good as provolone on a cheesesteak?”

John ignores her. She picks her way across the thoroughly unswept floor and tries to shift the precarious pile of dirty mixing bowls he’s left in front of the coffeemaker. When she finds there’s no room left in the sink, she gives him a pointed look.

“Excuse you,” she says. “It is my one day off. I want caffeine, and perhaps to walk through my own kitchen without getting chicken embryo on my clothing.”

“Mhm,” says John, paying no attention. He’s hinged at the waist with his elbows on the counter, staring at a recipe so thoroughly marked up that it’s no longer entirely legible, and he runs a flour-covered hand backwards through his hair.

Martha sets the bowls on the mercifully empty kitchen table and starts the coffeemaker. As the coffee brews, she rests her chin on John’s shoulder and attempts to decipher the paper in his hands.

“Brother dear,” she says. “You’re putting bacon in what, exactly?”

“...crème brûlée.”

“Why?”

“Because last week they said my flavors were _elitist_ ,” he says.

“Well, you did make Earl Grey cupcakes.”

“I _know_. That’s the _problem._ ”

Martha pours her coffee into a hideous chipped mug she finds in the back of the cupboard — _World’s Bestest Sister_ , with a floral pattern, courtesy of John at peak shithead — and sits down at the table, letting the steam fog her glasses.

“Have you considered that perhaps putting bacon in a French dessert isn’t the best way to solve that problem?” she says. “It’s kinda — I don’t know, cereal restaurant in Shoreditch of you.”

John’s only response is to shrug his shoulders incrementally, a twitchy sort of gesture that suggests his entire body is pouting.

“Do you even like bacon?”  

John shakes his head.

“Then why…?”

“I’m trying to be _a man of the people,_ ” John says. His voice is getting progressively higher-pitched, as it always does when he’s tired and unhappy, and Martha senses an imminent crisis of confidence. She remembers thirteen-year-old John, furiously upset at his inability to prevent their littlest brother from getting hurt; she remembers eighteen-year-old John, fighting back panic and tears in front of a pile of college brochures. Most recently, she remembers last year’s late-night phone calls and the frantic tone of John’s voice when he told her he no longer believed he was doing the right thing for his country.

She pinches the bridge of her nose and considers her options. Her hands still smell vaguely of nitrile, her head fuzzy from hospital-induced exhaustion, and she reaches out to tug on John’s elbow. When he turns to look at her, she nods sideways to the other chair.

“Sit down,” she suggests.

“I can’t,” says John. “I’ve gotta figure out how to keep the custard from running when I add the bacon and the maple syrup.”

“ _John_.”

“Fine.”

John wipes his hands on his apron and sits down with a heavy thud.

“Tell me why you made the Earl Grey cupcakes,” Martha says.

“I wanted to be interesting,” says John, fiddling with the seam of the apron pocket. “You can’t just do boring bakes and expect that to get you through the weekend.”

“Okay,” she says, “but did you _like_ those cupcakes?”

John opens his mouth, looks at Martha like she’s said something revelatory, and shuts it again.

“No,” he says eventually.

“Exactly,” says Martha. “You can’t put random fancy shit in the batter and assume that’ll make it interesting. You’ve gotta want to eat it.” When John remains quiet, she adds, “If you could have any crème brûlée in the world, what would it be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, if you could have any baked good at _all_ in the world, what would it be?”

“I don’t _know_!”

John nearly shouts the last word and Martha raises her eyebrows at him, long and pointed, until he drops his gaze to the tabletop and looks sheepish.

“Sorry,” he says. “I don’t know where that came from.”

“That’s okay.” She gets up from her chair and rummages for bread in the freezer. With her back still turned to John, in an attempt to create a semblance of privacy despite the size of the kitchen, she says, “Do you think maybe you jumped into this too fast?”

“Into what?”

“This show. You’ve always been good at baking, John, but you came back from Afghanistan and you just kinda — threw yourself into this. I’m just wondering if you should’ve taken a little more time to figure out what you wanted, is all.”

At this point, Martha’s long since found the bread, and she just stands in front of the freezer until her nose goes icy. John makes a strange coughing sound behind her.

“I had to do _something,_ ” he says. “I couldn’t just come back here and sleep all day and wander around your apartment and wait for something to care about.”

Martha makes a production of putting bread in the toaster to give John room to breathe.

“You’re from South Carolina,” she says, after a long pause. “You didn’t learn to bake in Geneva, or Paris, or London. What did you make for us when we were kids? What did you bake when I was sad?”

John snorts. “Cookies,” he says, “which will be _so_ much help in this situation.”

Martha plows on, undeterred. “What was our favorite cookie?”

The corner of John’s mouth twists minutely. “Snickerdoodles,” he says.

“Well then.” Martha grabs jam from the fridge and slides it across the table before sitting back down.

“Well then…what?”

“Snickerdoodle crème brûlée it is,” she says, smirking at him and running a finger around the lid of the jam jar.

“You’re shitting me.”

“I am not.”

“How am I supposed to get through this competition with snickerdoodle crème brûlée? That’s not exactly original, or inventive, or daring.”

“Make variations. Lemon snickerdoodles, and caramel apple snickerdoodles, and hot chocolate snickerdoodles, like we had as kids. And you can display them on a cookie sheet, like actual cookies, and maybe do something cute with the spoons.” She gives him a wide, evil grin, and adds, “It’ll be different, sure, but more importantly, someone might actually want to eat it.”

The toaster pops and John goes to fetch the toast, stepping in the same egg yolk Martha stepped in earlier. He makes a pained, disgusted face.

“Okay,” he says, once he’s busied himself with getting toast onto a plate without burning his fingers. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” she says, accepting the plate John hands her. “But for the love of God, please clean this kitchen. Do not make me spend my day off doing your dishes.”

John takes off his socks with the tips of his fingers, wrinkling his nose as he does so. “Fair enough,” he says.

Four hours later, John pokes his head around Martha’s bedroom door with a plate of cookies. “In case you need fuel for changing the world.”

“I’m not changing the world, you dork,” she says, but she takes a snickerdoodle and bites into it anyway. “Fuck, that’s good.”

“You _are_ ,” John insists. “You’re doing more good in that obstetrics unit that I’ve done in my whole life.”

“Maybe,” says Martha. “But I can’t bake like this to save my fucking life.”

“It’s just a recipe.” But John’s blushing, and the rain’s drumming rhythmic on the roof, and the smell of cinnamon drifts soft and safe through the twists and turns of the house.


End file.
